Kelly is the representative for Mississippi’s 1st congressional district (view map) and is a Republican. He has served since Jun 9, 2015. Kelly is next up for reelection in 2024 and serves until Jan 3, 2025. He is 57 years old.
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Kelly was among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Kelly joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Kelly voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors.
![Photo of Rep. Trent Kelly [R-MS1]](/static/legislator-photos/412673-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for Kelly.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Kelly is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot is a member of the House of Representatives positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Kelly has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2019 to Mar 21, 2023. See full analysis methodology.
Committee Membership
Trent Kelly sits on the following committees:
Enacted Legislation
Kelly was the primary sponsor of 3 bills that were enacted:
- H.R. 208 (117th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 500 West Main Street, Suite 102 in Tupelo, Mississippi, as the Colonel Carlyle Smitty Harris …
- H.R. 1615 (116th): Verification Alignment and Service-disabled Business Adjustment Act
- H.R. 5309 (114th): To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 401 McElroy Drive in Oxford, Mississippi, as the “Army First Lieutenant Donald C. Carwile Post …
Does 3 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Kelly sponsors bills primarily in these issue areas:
Armed Forces and National Security (39%) Government Operations and Politics (21%) Commerce (18%) International Affairs (9%) Immigration (6%) Science, Technology, Communications (6%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Kelly recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.Res. 65: Reaffirming United States-Uzbekistan relations.
- H.R. 8735 (117th): VETTs on Campus Act
- H.Res. 1223 (117th): Congratulating the University of Mississippi Rebels baseball team for winning the 2022 …
- H.R. 8039 (117th): To amend title 10, United States Code, to expand the period during …
- H.R. 7889 (117th): Military Fitness Incentive Tuition Act
- H.Res. 415 (117th): Reaffirming United States-Uzbekistan relations.
- H.R. 1913 (117th): Uzbekistan Normalized Trade Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jun 2015 to Mar 2023, Kelly missed 68 of 4,324 roll call votes, which is 1.6%. This is on par with the median of 1.5% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
